In the fall of 1990, I
was hired by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and his COO Eileen Gregory to
collaborate with the late blues historian Robert Palmer on a film we
later titled DEEP BLUES. The project never had a lot to do with Bob
Palmer’s remarkable book of the same name, but we still decided to borrow
its title for the film, since our mission was to locate and document
the sort of “deep” traditional blues that Bob insisted could only be
made by African American musicians with roots in and around the Mississippi
Delta. Bob also assured us that, no matter how much blues had changed
as it had circled the globe, transforming itself into any number of
newer styles and genres, we would still find first-rate Mississippi
artists playing essentially the same sort of music that Charley Patton,
Son House, Robert Johnson, and Skip James had once played in tiny shacks
beside cotton fields. And indeed, most of the artists we did find and
film - Junior Kimbrough (still unrecorded at that time), R.L. Burnside
(also virtually unknown), Big Jack Johnson, Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes,
Jessie Mae Hemphill, Lonnie Pitchford, and Jack Owens & Bud Spires
- were creating sounds closely related to what bluesmen and blueswomen
had been playing there for decades, even if the guitars they were using
now tended to be electric. But almost as exciting as finding and filming
the artists themselves was filming the clubs and lounges in which they
performed in Greenville, Clarks- dale, and Holly Springs, Mississippi
- venues that had evolved out of those original plantation shacks and
that, like them, were still called juke joints or juke houses.

As Bob Palmer explained
for our cameras, standing in front of Smitty’s Red Top Lounge in
Clarksdale, Mississippi, “The word ‘juke’ came to America from
West Africa where it was a word meaning ‘to have a good time.’ Down
in this part of the country, a juke joint is just a place where people
go to have a good time, and it’s associated with the blues.”

For us, however, the more
important point was that the music these artists were playing, the
audiences for whom they were playing it, and the venues in which the two
came together each weekend were clearly inseparable. In other words, to
try and remove this music from its natural setting would surely lead to
it being changed in some way, just as the blues had been altered again
and again when exported to Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, New
Orleans, and even Great Britain. And so, with that in mind, we resolved
to capture the overall milieu of Mississippi blues on film, and then to
deliver it, intact, to an unsuspecting world.

When we finally completed
DEEP BLUES in mid-1991 and began showing it in theaters a short time
later, many of the first to see it did, in fact, respond as if to an
exotic foreign culture they had never known existed. And certainly, for
all of the mainstream rock fans who had grown up believing that Eric
Clapton and Stevie Rae Vaughan represented everything they needed to
know about the blues (in spite of protestations from the two musicians
themselves), the view we provided of living and working blues artists in
the Mississippi Delta, the North Mississippi hill country, spooky
Bentonia, and other isolated communities really did seem like a glimpse
of something extremely foreign, and yet something strangely familiar as
well.

Moreover, the almost
simultaneous release of our film, of its soundtrack CD on Atlantic
Records, and of a boxed set of Robert Johnson CDs on Columbia Records
helped to ignite a new fascination with Mississippi blues in general.
And it led to labels such as Fat Possum (with the help of Bob Palmer
once again) recording wonderful new albums by the likes of Junior
Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, Cedell Davis, T-Model Ford, and others. In my
own case, the same fascination led to production of several more
blues-related films. But those, in turn, led to my growing concern that
the Mississippi juke joint scene, which had still seemed relatively
healthy in 1990, had been heading, ever since, into irreversible
decline. Fearing, in fact, that the entire juke joint tradition could
soon cease to exist, I resolved to find funding for at least one more
film that would capture “live” juke joint blues in the Mississippi
Delta.

Skipping ahead to early
2003, the release of LAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI JUKES is the direct result
not only of my ongoing determination to make such a film, but also of
the influence of several close friends and associates. For instance, in
the late winter of 2001, Terry Stewart (President of the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame & Museum) convinced David Hughes (primarily a
Vicksburg-based blues guitarist and collector of music memorabilia) to
bring me to Mississippi to show three of my blues-related docs at
Jackson’s Crossroads Film Festival, which David was then helping to
program. That David was able to fly me in for the early April festival
turned out to be fortuitous in several respects. For one thing, while
making my presentation there, I was introduced both to Louisiana blues
artist and actor Chris Thomas King who had literally grown up in a Baton
Rouge juke joint, and to locally based blues entrepreneur Vasti Jackson
who quickly challenged me to make a film about the “real” blues
joints of Mississippi, rather than focusing on the glitzier blues clubs
that had been springing up in recent years. But even more important,
David later took Terry Stewart, film critic Michael Wilmington, and me
to visit a local, late-night club called the Subway Lounge. And to say
the least, we were all impressed.

Although it’s difficult
to put our feelings that night into words, I believe it’s safe to say
that Terry, Michael and I were simply transported by the rough ambience
of the dank, smoky, poorly lit basement room in which we found
ourselves, by the harmonious interplay of black and white Mississippians
in a black-owned venue on the black side of town, and especially by the
extraordinary caliber of local musicians who sang and played their
hearts out from midnight until shortly before dawn. As for myself, I
decided right then and there that any film I made about Mississippi
jukes would have to include Jimmy and Helen King’s Subway Lounge
because, for reasons I could not fully comprehend, I truly felt that I
was home. It was as if all of the music I had listened to since my
mid-teens, and all of the issues I had cared about for just as long,
were suddenly present in their purest forms. And yes, there was
something in that welcoming smile of Helen by the front door, and of
Jimmy behind the bar, that said to me, “Your musical family has been
waiting here to receive you. You need never more feel ‘like a
motherless child.’”

A month later, I
presented the same three films on Beale Street in Memphis as part of the
W.C. Handy Awards celebrations and, while there, learned that a new club
owned by actor Morgan Freeman, Clarksdale lawyer Bill Luckett, and Blues
Foundation executive director Howard Stovall was set to open in
Clarksdale the very same weekend. Called Ground Zero (some months before
the tragic events of 9/11) due to the fact that blues is generally
assumed to have been born right there in Clarksdale, the club had been
intentionally designed to evoke the look and feel of a traditional
Mississippi juke joint, right as such places were growing more and more
scarce. Upon hearing about the club and about Morgan Freeman’s
personal involvement, I immediately put out feelers through Howard
Stovall and Bill Luckett in the hope of involving Morgan and Ground Zero
in my planned juke joint film.

As the year drew on, I
also spent more and more time seeking funding for the production, and
eventually partnered with David Hughes in an effort to secure backing in
Mississippi itself. Unfortunately, those particular efforts failed. But
as the year came to a close, I suddenly learned that a cable TV channel
called Black Starz! had been presenting both DEEP BLUES and my 1999 film
HELLHOUNDS ON MY TRAIL: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson in what can only
be called “heavy rotation.” With little left to lose, I decided to
contact executives at Starz Encore Entertainment regarding some of my
pending projects. To my great delight, the project that interested them
most was my proposed juke joint film, and that interest became even
greater when we learned from David Hughes that the City of Jackson was
threatening to tear down the deteriorating building that had long housed
the Subway Lounge in its basement - a building that also had once housed
Jackson’s legendary Summers Hotel, itself the city’s first
black-owned hotel, and the first such business in the entire region to
rent rooms to people of color. Suitably intrigued by these developments,
as well as by the fact that both Morgan Freeman and Chris Thomas King
had now agreed to work with us on the project, Starz made a deal with
the Heritage Network that allowed the two companies together to provide
full funding for the project. And by the first week of April 2002, we
were finally able to begin filming in both Jackson and Clarksdale.

Although we spent roughly
a week on location in Mississippi, our shooting plans mostly revolved
around one long, late-night concert that we filmed at the Subway Lounge
beginning shortly before midnight on Friday, April 5th. On a typical
weekend, one of two alternating house bands - either the House Rockers
led by drummer Dudley Tardo, or the King Edward Blues Band led by
guitarist and vocalist King Edward - would hold court there until
roughly 5:00 in the morning, with perhaps a half-dozen local singers
(and sometimes additional musicians) sitting in with the band over the
course of the one night. But on this less typical occasion, both bands
were brought in to perform at various times, along with a host of
singers and musicians who had been “regulars” at the Subway at one
point or another in its 35-year history. Subway owner Jimmy King couldn’t
stand the thought of anyone being left out, so project music director
David Hughes arranged for dozens of different performers simply to show
up on the night in question. And then, together, he and the musicians
decided who would perform what, and with whom, as cameras and recording
equipment rolled under my direction.

Now, granted, everyone
was mostly performing Subway Lounge standards with which they were all
familiar, and many of those were covers of well-known songs released
over the years by Jackson’s influential Malaco Records label. And yet,
when you take into consideration that some of these individuals had
never before played together, and that everything was being performed in
single takes using arrangements which were essentially created on the
spot, the quality of the resulting performances is truly remarkable.

Unfortunately, not all of
the musicians we invited on short notice could be with us that Friday
night, so a few - blues performer and bandleader Bobby Rush, gospel-
musician-turned-bluesman Eddie Cotton, and returning visitor from
Louisiana Chris Thomas King - were filmed the previous afternoon
(Thursday, April 4th) in intimate solo sessions at the Subway. In
addition, as we were setting up at theSubway Friday evening, we
learned from Bill Luckett that he and Morgan Freeman could meet with us
at Ground Zero in Clarksdale the following night (Saturday, April 6th).
So, we hurriedly arranged for Alvin Youngblood Hart (who had previously
performed a brilliant rendition of the more-or-less title song in my
film HELLHOUNDS ON MY TRAIL) to drive down from Memphis to perform for
us at Ground Zero, and also arranged for local Clarksdale band the Deep
Cuts to perform for us there as well. In the end, celebrated Clarksdale
drummer Sam Carr (who had made a brief appearance in DEEP BLUES nearly
twelve years before) and young Deep Cuts bass player Anthony Sherrod
backed up Alvin for one ensemble number, and Bentonia juke joint
guitarist John S. Holmes joined Deep Cuts in place of their own absent
guitar player. As it turned out, I wasn’t able to fit the Deep Cuts
performance into the film due to time constraints, but I did manage to
include it on both the collector’s edition DVD and the separate
soundtrack CD.

The film and the CD each
open with one of the numbers performed for us by Alvin Youngblood Hart,
though in each case, it’s a different song. On the CD, Alvin plays one
of his originals called “Joe Friday” in which he pleads for Jack
Webb’s classic detective character to find his missing woman, while
wailing on guitar like a reborn Elmore James. In the film, by contrast,
Alvin opens with a solo performance of Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues,”
successfully evoking how Patton must have sounded in a dimly lit, rural
juke. Of course, in the film, Alvin then performs “Joe Friday” as
well, whereas on the CD, the second song heard is the Deep Cuts doing
“Every Goodbye Don’t Mean I’m Gone,” with vocalist and
songwriter Josh “Razorblade” Stewart strutting his stuff in a gold
Robert Visconti suit while performing it. Again, that Deep Cuts
performance is provided on the DVD as a bonus selection, though not as
part of the film itself.

The remainder of both the
film and the CD is comprised of material recorded at the Subway Lounge,
almost all of it from either the late-night concert on Friday, April 5th
or the intimate sessions staged there on Thursday afternoon, April 4th.

In fact, the third
performance in the film was recorded at that late-night Subway concert,
but not until roughly 5:00 in the morning, which probably explains why
ace harp player Greg “Fingers” Taylor could only remember lyrics for
the first two verses of his song. “Subway Swing,” as it’s called,
is a heart-felt tribute to Jackson’s premier blues joint which Fingers
wrote during the decades that he was based in Jackson and performing
there regularly (when not touring the world with Jimmy Buffett’s Coral
Reefer Band). Fingers relocated to Flint, Michigan a few years back for
family reasons, but he flew back home again to be part of this special
event at his beloved Subway. He is ably backed by local guitarist Casey
Phillips and Casey’s group the Hounds.

The fourth selection in
the film is a cover of the Little Milton hit “The Blues Is Alright,”
now performed as a duet by Dennis Fountain and Pat Brown. Dennis, a game
room manager for Vicksburg’s Ameristar Casino Hotel, is also one of
only three singers paid by Jimmy King to perform at the Subway on a
regular basis. Although Dennis’s specialty is silken-smooth covers of
soul ballads, he’s equally good on an upbeat soul-blues number such as
this. His partner on the number, Pat Brown, was once a Subway regular
herself, but she currently has a demanding schedule of session work and
touring with her own band. And of course, do note the great guitar solo
by veteran blues guitarist Jesse Robinson, and keyboard work by Pat’s
husband Josh Brown, Jr.

Song number five in the
film, “Stormy Monday,” is performed by singer Patrice Moncell,
accompanied by Subway mainstays the House Rockers. Because Patrice now
spends an increasing amount of time on tour, she’s no longer able to
appear at the Subway every single weekend. But any time that “Mississippi’s
own queen of the blues” (to quote emcee and tenor sax player London
Moffitt III) comes strutting through the front door of the lounge, her
well-rounded figure squeezed into a colorful evening dress, the
late-night crowd parts for her as they would for few others, and the
ensuing performance never disappoints. Music journalists are sometimes
too quick to call a dynamic vocalist a “force of nature.” But
Patrice Moncell is capable of so much passion, so much dexterity, so
much range, and so much sheer volume that she can flatten a roomful of
listeners as readily as a late summer hurricane can flatten a Delta
housing project. So, in her case at least, the term truly fits. But in
this song, she also receives solid support from soloists Mark
Whittington on guitar and James Evans on alto sax.

The sixth performance in
the film features an original number called “All Night Long” that
was written by locally based musician Eddie Cotton and performed by him
for his good friend Jimmy King on Thursday, April 4th. Eddie was once
better known for playing gospel music in local churches, but he started
sitting in with the King Edward Blues Band at the Subway Lounge and soon
found he had a budding career as a blues musician. Eddie’s last-minute
request that Jimmy join him in singing the chorus of the song stems from
knowledge that Jimmy was once a professional singer himself.

Selection number seven is
“Casino in the Cottonfield,” written and performed for the film by
Vasti Jackson, a professional musician, record producer, and blues
booster based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Vasti has a sometimes
ferocious guitar style which publicist Cary Baker recently dubbed “stun
guitar,” and his lyrics here bemoan the way newly built casinos are
sucking all the money out of the Delta (not to mention providing stiff
competition for Mississippi’s few remaining juke joints, which is
helping to drive many of them out of business). Although you wouldn’t
know it from the quality of its performance, the King Edward Blues Band
was totally unfamiliar with this tune before performing it that night.
But if you watch Vasti throughout the performance, you’ll see him
placing one of his hands behind his back in order to signal chord
changes to the other musicians.

Song number eight is
Patrice Moncell’s unforgettably sexy cover of Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’,”
one of the chitlin’ circuit’s biggest hits of recent years. In her
own signature version of the tune, Patrice provides laugh-inducing
details of a recent sexual conquest overtop of a funky soul groove laid
down by Vasti Jackson with the House Rockers. The weapons in Patrice’s
raunchy arsenal include fried chicken, collard greens, corn bread, peach
cobbler, a fifth of gin, and “whipped cream in the freezer” (“I’ll
tell ya’ll about that one later on!”). This is nearly 10 full
minutes of pure, unadulterated, musical seduction, leavened by a dollop
of frustration with a thickheaded member of the opposite sex. As Patrice
quotes her mama as warning, “If that man look too good, it might be
somethin’ wrong with him.”

The ninth performance in
the film features a duet between Levon Lindsey, a long-distance truck
driver during the week and honey-throated R&B singer on the weekend,
and J.T. Watkins, a
retired-wildlife-conservation-officer-turned-security-guard by day and
born blues shouter by night. Levon is the second and perhaps most
important of the three house singers paid by Jimmy King to perform every
weekend, and J.T. is Levon’s good friend who regularly comes onstage
for two or three stirring duets. At this point in the film, they perform
a cover of McKinley Mitchell’s rousing “You Know I’ve Tried,”
while later, they blend their complementary voices on Mitchell’s
gospel-like hit “The End of the Rainbow.” And in both cases, they
are given skillful accompaniment by the Subway’s own King Edward
Blues Band. The songs these two fine singers sing, and the styles in
which they sing them, are ample evidence of the influence of Jackson’s
own Malaco Records on the musical consciousness of the entire region, as
are the additional Malaco songs used in the film and on the CD,
including “Hole in the Wall,” “Members Only,” “The Blues Is
Alright,” “Still Called the Blues,” “Garbage Man,” and (on the
DVD only) “Down Home Blues.”

The tenth selection in
the film, “Garbage Man” by Bobby Rush, was one of the songs recorded
on a quiet afternoon at the Subway with no one else present but Jimmy
King and a small film crew. As any true fan of Mississippi blues will
tell you, Bobby Rush, his tight band, and his lovely backup singers have
been an institution on the southern “chitlin’ circuit” since the
1950s, and his bawdy, energetic shows still sell out casinos, juke
joints, and blues festivals alike. Here, performing one of his own
classic compositions for longtime buddy Jimmy King, he proves that he
can be just as powerful when armed with only a blues harp and his
always-soulful voice as when he’s fronting the entire Bobby Rush
revue. And check out the hilarious DVD bonus footage of Bobby
demonstrating two blues harps for Jimmy, with all of the sexual and
emotional overtones he can bring to just a handful of well-played notes.

A portion of the time put
in every second weekend by the King Edward Blues Band, one of the Subway
Lounge’s two alternating house bands, is spent working as a
self-contained unit, with veteran bluesman King Edward himself serving
as singer and lead guitarist. The film’s eleventh number showcases
just such a situation, with King Edward leading his band in a
rough-and-ready, down-and-dirty, no-frills version of the Mel Waiters
classic “Hole in the Wall.” The song itself offers a vivid picture
of a “smoke-filled room,” of “whisky and chicken wings,” and of
the singer’s “high class woman” friend who, at first, turns up her
nose at the run-down venue in question, but who ultimately winds up
dancing there until dawn. In fact, you can almost hear the grease and
spilled beer sliding down un-painted walls, thanks to Johnny Sharp’s
squealing alto sax solo. In other words, the song’s performance is a
near-perfect evocation of a weekend night at the Subway Lounge itself.

The twelfth selection in
the film is actually just an excerpt from a longer number recorded at
approximately 6:00 in the morning at the Subway Lounge. After having
spent the entire night helping to prepare other singers and musicians to
perform songs embodying the essential Subway experience, the film’s
music director David Hughes finally got to climb onstage himself and,
together with fellow guitarist Virgil Brawley, began improvising a jump
blues tune around lyrics he had written about the much-beloved Subway.
In fact, knowing that I planned to title the film LAST OF THE
MISSISSIPPI JUKES, David adopted that as his theme and then dedicated
his song to the man-of-the-hour Jimmy King. Of course, much like “Fingers”
Taylor with his performance of “Subway Swing” an hour before, David
could only remember the first verse he had written. So, he and Virgil
soon began vamping on guitar with David calling out for Jimmy to join
them onstage. After a brief pause, Jimmy - who always seems to be
running in a hundred directions at once in order to keep beer, music,
and his patented chili dogs (called “blues dogs”) flowing - suddenly
reappeared, climbed onto the low stage, and grabbed hold of a
microphone. Then, with little or no warning, the band abruptly changed
keys, and Jimmy started singing Little Junior Parker’s classic tune
“Next Time You See Me,” just as he had performed it years before
while a singer and saxophone player with the Duke Huddleston Orchestra,
and later with his own band the Rocketeers that backed up Ivory Joe
Hunter and Percy Mayfield. It was a lovely and unscripted close to an
unbelievable musical evening, and it demonstrated the sort of
unpredictability (including a sour note or two) for which the Subway has
long been known. Of course, to hear this entire performance - rather
than just the brief excerpt included in the film - you’ll have to pick
up a copy of our soundtrack CD.

For the film’s
thirteenth performance, guitarist Vasti Jackson and members of the King
Edward Blues Band invited legendary songwriter George Jackson up to the
stage for a stunningly improvised cover of George’s own song, “Still
Called the Blues.” It’s a wonderful song that shows how emotional
and psychological problems of the modern world are really just the same
old blues that has dogged human beings throughout our history. And
although George Jackson may not be the strongest of singers on the
planet, he has a superb sense of timing that comes through not only in
his playful interaction with Vasti’s leg-lifting bursts of country-
funk guitar, but also in the soulful groove he lays down after
exhausting all of his standard lyrics.

The fourteenth number is
McKinley Mitchell’s bittersweet “End of the Rainbow” as performed
by Levon Lindsey and J.T. Watkins backed up by the King Edward Blues
Band. Because the song combines a somber melody with moving yet
fatalistic lyrics, it provides the perfect background for images of the
Civil Rights struggle, the implication being that problems plaguing
black people throughout the South led not only to the birth of the
blues, but also to creation of the Civil Rights Movement itself.

The 15th selection is a
somewhat uncharacteristic number by Louisiana actor and musician Chris
Thomas King. Already well-known to blues fans for his forward-looking
hybrids of blues and hip-hip on his own self-produced CDs, Chris’s
appearance as legendary bluesman Tommy Johnson in the hit movie O
BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? led to his deep immersion in country blues
traditions and a whole lot more. That is, as a result of his spending
weeks being filmed in and around Jackson, Mississippi (with all of the
tedious “down time” typical to Hollywood productions), he not only
wound up visiting the Subway Lounge for both weekend recreation and the
film’s official wrap party, but also spent his considerable free time
writing new songs of his own in the style of classic Delta blues.
Therefore, when Chris returned to Jackson on April 4, 2002 to pay
tribute to Jimmy King and his endangered Subway Lounge, he chose to
perform just such a song, and one that symbolically recounts what Baton
Rouge, Louisiana authorities did to his own father’s well-known juke
called Tabby’s Blues Box. This powerful tune is titled “John Law
Burned Down the Liquor Sto’.”

Song number sixteen, “What
Goes Around, Comes Around,” is a feverish “woman scorned” number
by the equally hot singer and electric slide guitar player known simply
as Lucille. A native of Lake Providence, Louisiana, Lucille (aka Lu
Ridges) now lives in Vicksburg, Mississippi where she directs the newly
formed Willie Dixon-Vicksburg Blues Society. Over the years, she has
toured with Little Milton, backed up Albert King, and performed with the
likes of Memphis Slim, Z.Z. Hill, Dr. John, and R.L. Burnside. Her
combination Cherokee and Louisiana French heritage makes her a
one-of-a-kind performer, supported here by an assortment of Mississippi
musicians including Greg “Fingers” Taylor on harp.

The seventeenth song in
the film is the euphemistic “Cigarette Blues” that was written by Bo
Carter, a prominent blues guitarist and vocalist in Jackson during the
1920s and 1930s. Carter, who once lived only a few blocks from where the
Subway now stands, gained his fame both as a solo performer and
recording artist and as a member of the Mississippi Sheiks with his
brothers Lonnie, Harry and Sam Chatmon. “Cigarette Blues” was
performed for our film by blues historian and musician Steve
Cheseborough as he sat and chatted with Jimmy King at the Subway Lounge
on Sunday night, April 7th.

The film’s climactic
number is Abdul Rasheed’s cover of the Bobby “Blue” Bland hit “Members
Only” which, in the context of this project, invites everyone
everywhere to visit the Subway Lounge. With his beaming face scanning
the crowd, and his shaved head nearly scraping the ceiling, Abdul (a
retired postal worker and the third of three singers paid to perform at
the Subway each week) croons his lyrical “welcome” over the House
Rockers’ gently cascading beat: “Members only...it’s a private
party. Don’t need no money...to qualify. Don’t bring your checkbook;
bring your broken heart. ‘Cause it’s members only...tonight.”
Refining that message still further, he sings, “Say you’ve lost your
woman; say you’ve lost your man. You’ve got a lot of problems...in
your life. We’re throwing a party...for the sad and lonely. And it’s
members only...tonight.”

With surprising
simplicity, Jackson-based songwriter Larry Addison (as interpreted by
Abdul) has pinpointed not only why the blues would have first taken root
in the Mississippi Delta (this land of slavery, sharecropping, lynchings,
and more), but also why those very same blues could reach and inspire
ordinary people around the world. As we all know, for hundreds of years,
African Americans, especially in the Deep South, were a people apart,
suffering unspeakable hardships at the hands of white masters and
bosses. And yet, they survived, both as a people and as individuals, by
sticking together and by finding their own spiritual and emotional
outlets in Sunday morning churchgoing and Saturday night jukin’. So,
when “Members Only” alludes to a place where downhearted people can
find relief in the company of fellow sufferers, we know implicitly what
is being said: that black people, more than any others in our society,
have had good reason to be downhearted, and that they, more than others,
would need a place where what’s wrong could be made right again. Of
course, “Members Only” (especially with Abdul’s improvisations
added) goes one step further, visualizing the Mississippi juke joint not
only as a place for black escape and release, but also as a place for
harmony between the sexes, between generations, and especially between
races: “Go tell Mama; go tell Daddy: Red or yellow...black or white.
We’re throwing a party [right here at the Subway] for the
brokenhearted. And it’s members only...tonight.” As Living Blues
magazine quoted the director of a local social services organization as
saying several years ago, “The Subway is about the only place [in
Jackson] where middle-class whites and inner city blacks can meet with
some kind of common humanity.” So, the same ramshackle venues that
once provided refuge for a black population under siege can now provide
a means for local blacks and whites (indeed, all blacks and whites) to
overcome a heritage of racial hatred and separation and to come together
in a shared appreciation for enduring black traditions. The juke joints
themselves may be slipping away, but the sounds they created, and the
spirits they unleashed, already belong to the ages.

Again, the traditional
blues culture that took root early in the last century would seem, at
last, to be verging on extinction. Reportedly, hundreds of jukes once
operated in black neighborhoods across Mississippi. But only a short
time ago, historian Steve Cheseborough marched from one end of the state
to the other in search of truly authentic jukes which he could list in
his book Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues. Yet, he could
locate only a mere half-dozen that still feature “live” music, and
one of those was Jimmy King’s Subway Lounge.

So, fans hoping to
experience even a hint of how the blues scene has long functioned in
these parts should get themselves quickly down to Jackson, Mississippi
before (1) the decaying old Summers Hotel building finally collapses,
(2) the city follows through on its threat to condemn the place, or (3)
Jimmy simply throws up his hands and moves to a new location - one that
may or may not have the same sort of ambience which his current juke
enjoys.

Of course, there’s a
fourth possibility as well, and that is that Jimmy King will choose to
close up shop and get out of the juke joint business altogether. Without
doubt, the saddest part of this project was seeing his charming wife
Helen becoming ill and having to be hospitalized just as we were filming
at the Subway last April, and then knowing that she was succumbing to
lung cancer at the same time that we were completing the film late in
the year. Certainly, no one could blame Jimmy if he wanted to take life
a little easier now after so major a loss. But Jimmy King, a retired
biology teacher and the most positive person I’ve ever met, says that
he’s determined to keep the Subway open - not only for himself, for
his musicians, and for his devoted patrons, but because it’s what
Helen would have wanted. So, even if some see Helen’s passing as still
another sad omen regarding the future of this and all other Mississippi
juke joints, the performers working the Subway each weekend have yet to
miss a beat. As if to emphasize this fact, as well as to demonstrate how
different blues musicians can perform the same song in totally different
ways, I’ve added two “live” versions of the classic George Jackson
composition “Down Home Blues” to the DVD, one performed by Abdul
Rasheed with the House Rockers, and the other performed by Levon Lindsey
with the King Edward Blues Band.

Late 2004 Update: Sadly
the efforts to keep the original Subway functioning were not successful,
and this unique juke joint/urban lounge closed for good in mid-2003.
However, a prominent Jackson restaurant called Schimmel's has recently
joined forces with Jimmy King and the House Rockers band to stage a
series of "Subway Reunions," and Jimmy himself has purchased
an old building on Jackson's historic Farrish Street which he hopes
eventually to open as the new Subway Lounge. Anyone with a serious desire
to invest in this new venture may contact me via e-mail and I'll forward the message to Jimmy King.